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EUROPE AND THE CAUCASUS: CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL PARALLELS // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2011. Issue 11 (113). P. 83-86

In author’s opinion on the ancient history of the Northwestern and central Northern Caucasus was closely linked with Indo-European migrations from Central Europe in the second half of the 3rd – beginning of the 2nd centuries B.C. The first migrants to this region consisted of the mixed groups of Indo-Europeans and non-Indo-Europeans that can be corresponded to the Tocharians (Afanasievo culture) and formed pre-Maikop cultural horizon with the horse-head scepters. The second stream of the European population that reached the Caucasus included the “Ancient Europeans” (AE – ancestors of the Slavs, the Germans, the Balts, the Celts, the Italics), and the Anatolians as well. The dolmens under the barrows in the Northwestern Caucasus were left by them. The archaeological equivalents of AE groups settled in the central part of the Northern Caucasus are the kurgan burials of the Kuban-Terek culture that dated from 3rd -2nd centuries BC. Thus the history of the Ancient Caucasus in 3rd century B.C can be regarded as a part of the IndoEuropean history of Europe.

Keywords: Northern Caucasus, Eneolithic, horse-head scepters, Bronze Age, Novosvobodnaya-Klady dolmens, kurgan burials, Kuban-Terek culture of 3-2nd centuries., Indo-European homelands and migrations